In the new issue of the Boston Phoenix – in print tomorrow, online now – I provide my first in-print rankings of the 2012 GOP Presidential candidates’ chances. You can read that here: The GOP’s Top Dog? It’s T-Paw, Not Mitt.

But that only has room for the Top 10, and my blog readers know that I’ve been ranking the Top 25 for over two years now.

The sliver of humanity who care about such things are currently fascinated by the resignation of US Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, apparently to pursue a campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination.

The conversation has mostly centered around the question of why in God's name Huntsman would run, when his relatively moderate positions, combined with his late start and other factors, would seem to make his quest rather quixotic.

There's a spate of headlines zipping around the national politicojournosphere that Mitt Romney is considering "skipping" the Iowa caucuses in his quest for the 2012 campaign.

I am writing to ask my fellow journos and pundits, wherever they may be, to resist echoing the ridiculous verb "skip" in discussing this. If Romney spends less of his resources on Iowa this time (as I have long suggested he will), it will be because he believes he can't win there, and doesn't want to be seen as trying and losing.

David S. Bernstein: I invited you to have this email conversation about the 2012 GOP Presidential campaign because you and I both follow politics, but from different angles. I, of course, am an award-winning journalist for the Boston Phoenix. You are a political scientist in San Antonio with a PhD from UCal-Berkeley, who blogs at plainblogaboutpolitics.

I've been doing these rankings for two years now, starting on the final day of 2008. Looking back at that first list, seemingly so early in the cycle for speculation, what's remarkable to me is how little things have changed since then.

Sure, a few have dropped off the list -- Mark Sanford, most notably, as well as his fellow adulterer John Ensign; also Kay Bailey Hutchison and Charlie Crist, both of whom got humiliatingly rejected by conservatives in their home states this year; and a few of my thinking-outside-the-box names like Bill Frist and Tom Ridge.

In this week's issue of the Boston Phoenix -- in print tomorrow, online now -- I use our "year ahead" issue to look at the very new Republican landscape in New Hampshire, awaiting the 2012 Presidential candidates.

Those candidates will be spending 2011 sucking up to influential Republicans in the Granite State, naturally.

Mitt Romney has an op-ed in today's USA Today, criticizing the big tax deal working its way through Congress. This puts him at odds with Tim Pawlenty and other potential Presidential prospects, who have criticized portions but said that the overall compromise is worth passing. The Senate in fact passed the bill overwhelmingly yesterday; dark-horse ultra-conservative Jim DeMint was one of only five Republicans to vote no; potential Prez challenger Jim Thune of South Dakota voted yes.

Boston PhoenixRomney Rebound?Published 1/9/2012 by David S. Bernstein
Mitt Romney at the Pinkerton School, NH. Saturday, January 7, 2012. Photo (c) Jeremiah Robinson for the Boston Phoenix. Just before the 2004 New Hampshire...

Boston PhoenixBachmann's ConvictionsPublished 12/21/2011 by David S. Bernstein
A quick stipulation: for the purposes of this review, I will pretty much pretend that Core of Conviction, by Michele Bachmann, ends with her 2006...